


Unfamiliar

by arwainian



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 19:42:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10646736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arwainian/pseuds/arwainian
Summary: He doesn't recognize the people's voices here. He just knows they're talking about him.





	Unfamiliar

The voices are different here. Of course they are. Everything is different here. But it’s really the voices that get him.

They aren’t his friends’ voices, but, he supposes, he doesn’t have friends anymore does he? All of them left him behind even before he moved away.

He's not used to being the center of attention. He’s not the one who’s talked about. Well, at least he used to not be.

“Why did he have to be in my class?”

He’s heard his teacher say. She tells him to stay out of trouble. Stay away from the one kid who’s not whispering.

None of the students should even know! It was only going to be the staff. And yet.

“I heard he tried to strangle someone.”

There’s still whispers.

“Don’t look at him. He’ll hurt you.”

And no eye contact.

“Shit I think that’s him.”

And rooms that fall silent when he walks in.

He’s surrounded by unfamiliar voices talking in unfamiliar halls about someone he isn’t. Someone he never was and will never be.

(Somewhere, months in the future, he sits, battered and bruised and still drowsy from whatever they gave him, on the floor of a windowless room and he signs a confession. He knows nothing will be done with it if everything goes as planned but it still feels like he’s giving up.)

Those students whispering and teachers complaining, they’re not talking about him. But in a way, they are, and it’s unsettling.

Because he’s not himself anymore. He’s what they see him as.

He’s an outcast.

A delinquent.

A criminal.

He is to be feared.

And avoided.

And...talked about.

That’s not who he is. He’s not a criminal. He did what was right and paid the price this shitty world demands for standing up for the weak.

They’ve made him someone else though. And he keeps wanting to tell them that that’s not who he is. But what can he really say? It won’t change the fact that when the world looks at him all it sees is an assault charge and an expulsion. It makes him want to scream.

_THAT’S NOT ME! THAT’S NOT WHO I AM! DID YOU EXPECT ME TO JUST STAND BY AND WATCH?!_

He doesn’t though. He says “I won’t get into any trouble,” and lets his fists clench until his knuckles are white and his palms have crescent shaped indents. He has to remind himself to breathe when he smiles at the principal.

Maybe that’s part of why tearing the mask off is always such a relief. He can just revel in the anger at the UNFAIRNESS OF IT ALL as his blood drips down his face and he really, truly smiles.

And now there’s a new unfamiliar voice. It tells him he will fly on the wings of rebellion and he believes it.

Whispers still follow him though. They still talk in fearful voices that he doesn’t know. The version of him they talk about is as unfamiliar to him as the voices he hears them speak in. Nothing in this city is the same anyway. An unfamiliar city with unfamiliar voices talking about an unfamiliar him.

**Author's Note:**

> I sorta imagine the protagonist is holding back a lot of anger. Like yeah he's kind but anybody would be frustrated out of their mind in his position.


End file.
